Election of 1896 – Changing Parties
The election of 1896 was one of the most important in American History. It changed the Democratic Party. William Jennings Bryan hijacked the convention delivering his famous Cross of Gold Speech that pitted agriculture against industry. It turned the Bourbon Democrats from a party steeped in the issues of the Civil War to a party focused on the impact of the country’s industrial future.
Bryan’s campaign style challenged the belief the presidency sought the man; the man didn’t seek the presidency. Bryan broke with tradition taking his message from the back porch to the rails actively whistle stopping across the country.
The Republicans were also changing. The social revolution had established the GOP’s new Progressive wing.
20th Century Progressives were Protestants who believed they could use the new social science to engineer a more just and profitable America. Unlike the Populists who felt they had been left behind by the Industrial Revolution, Progressives were born out of the success of industrialization.
The revival turned into the 3rd Awakening, but this movement wasn’t into saving souls. They wanted to change laws. They wanted to break up the monopolies strangling small employers and bankrupting farmers. They wanted to make food and medicine safe. They were concerned about temperance. Money going to taverns rather than families. Public schools to educate and Americanize immigrants. The movement became the new Social Gospel.
It was a spirit of Yankee aristocracy fit perfectly with the Roosevelt family belief
in Noblesse oblige. It became the cornerstone of Roosevelt’s politics.
The turn of the century progressives were interested in conservation. They wanted to create national parks and green spaces on the cities.
In June 1896 the Republican Party nominated William McKinley on the 1st Ballot.
Roosevelt had backed Thomas Brackett Reed, the 32nd Speaker of the House. It was a party mistake. That combined with his failure as a police commissioner TR found himself sitting in the penalty box.
In need of a job, he invites Archie’s godparents Bellamy and Maria Longworth Nicolas Storer to Sagamore Hill. During their visit he takes Maria rowing in Cold Spring Harbor and asks if she would use her influence to get her old friend William McKinley to consider him for Assistant Secretary of the Navy It worked.
The Fedor Encke portrait of Roosevelt in his Rough Rider uniform was a gift from Bellamy and Maria Storer.